WW II Historical Thread, Discussion, Pics, Videos

[shen]

Siberia had vast amounts of coal, oil, gas, aluminum, iron, magnese, copper, nickel, chromium, lumber, potential for hydro-electric power. Siberia may not have rubber, but it is the full house as far as mineral resources for wareffort goes, much more so than even the european controlled east indies.

Even when Japan eventually find herself at war with the US, she would have been much stronger than she was, because not only did she have the full resources of Siberia, those can all be conveyed to centers of Japanese industry in Manchuria and Japan proper along interior lines of communication, immune to interdiction by the US navy.

During WWII, it is easy to overestimate how much resources from the east Indies actually helped Japan. These resources can only reach Japan along numerous highly exposed exterior lines of sea lane communication. The US ran a very effective submarine interdiction campaign against these sea lanes, much more effective than Germany's Uboat campaign against Britain. By 1943 successful shippments were already scarce and Japanese merchant fleet was decimated and continuing to suffer losses far above replacement rate. Some estimate suggests US interdiction campaign cut Japanese war production by 2/3.

Even the disposition of Japanese navy was dictated by the fact that Japanese fleet can not be fuelled if it stationed itself in Japan proper, and must operate as much as possible out of Singapore so crude oil from Dutch East Indies can be sent directly to Japanese warships instead of being sunk on tankers while on the way to be refined in Japan and distributed to the fleet.

I don't doubt Siberia has vast resource potential. The problem is what critical resources were technical feasible for Japan to exploit back in late 1930's. Coal, and most other resources, they already had aplenty in Manchuria and other parts of conquered China.

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According to this, Japanese annual oil consumption peaked in 1943 at 44million barrels.

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1940, the entire Siberian oil production was 1.4% of total Soviet oil production. If you look for the Siberian oil production regions on a map, it seems obvious the vast majority of even that 1.4% can't transported back to Japan. The only accessible Siberian oil field seems to be Ohka located Sakhalin Island, with an annual production of 470,000 tonnes (1/3 of which was already going to the Japanese). The available Siberian oil production doesn't seem to come nearly to fulfill Japanese consumption.

 

[Jeff Head]

I don't doubt Siberia has vast resource potential. The problem is what critical resources were technical feasible for Japan to exploit back in late 1930's. Coal, and most other resources, they already had aplenty in Manchuria and other parts of conquered China.

...Japanese annual oil consumption peaked in 1943 at 44million barrels, the entire Siberian oil production was 1.4% of total Soviet oil production. The available Siberian oil production doesn't seem to come nearly to fulfill Japanese consumption.

Well, the Japanese would have had to find, develop, and extract it. Once the US and west came into the war against Japane, they did not have the time to do that.

However, I think Chuck's point is that if the Japanese had not hit Pearl Harbor, if they had not over extended themselves to the south, then the west may not have come into the war for some time, and thus Japan would have had more time.

Particularly as the Soviet Union was, from June 1941 until 1944, in a death struggle with Germany. If the Japanese had taken the resource they committed to the drive into the South Pacific, and instead gathered those forces in China for a launch against Soviet Siberia in 1941, they may well have been able to help deliver a death blow to the Soviet Union, and had the time to get a LOT more resources developed in the Siberian area.

It's all a big "what of" game that we cannot decipher. It could have gone bad in 100 ways or more. But with the extreme pressure on the Soviet Union to the west by Germany, the Japanese may have had a decent chance to pull it off without bringing the west into the war at the time it came in. Put off the US entry into the Pacific War by 2-3 years, and everything changes. I believe that is Chuck's point.

Even then, IMHO, once the US came into it, Japan would have not been able to keep up in production, and probably would have used the same flawed tactics.

 

[Rutim]

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

So a literal avalanche of men and material came at the Japanese, along with better tactics (like pulling our best pilots back after so long so they could effectively train others instead of having them fight until they died).

Well, that was pretty much the same case Germans had went through with U-Bootwaffe. The statistics which became known to us after the war showed that only 1/3 of all of the U-Boots had sunk a ship, most of hits were made by experienced commadners, that from 1943 new captains were usually eliminated on their first or second patrol and towards the end of the war they manned U-Boots mainly with Hitlerjugend youngsters who underwent only brief training.

Then you can go to the Japanese doctrine and how they miused submarine warefare compared to Germany and US. It wouldn't be probably an exaggeration to tell that submarines won the war on Pacific after cutting reinforcement/logistic lines of the Japanese or at least shortened it by big amount of time.

But according to postwar interviews with Kwantung army officers, the battle at Nomonhan left such an impression on the Japanese army about the unpreparedness of the Japanese army to face Soviet forces, that Kwantung army advised against an attack on Russia even while Germany were inflicting some of the heaviest defeats ever absorbed by any army upon the red army before Kiev and Slomansk.

It had been more war in China rather than anything else. The front would be so long that it could probably match equator. Keep in mind that US and USSR weren't allies at the time - I'd even say the opposite. Non agression treaty was optimum for both sides at the time. And it showed Japanese how much the communication is important as Kwantung Army acted largely on it's own accord.

 

[chuck731]

Non agression treaty was optimum for both sides at the time. And it showed Japanese how much the communication is important as Kwantung Army acted largely on it's own accord.

Communication wasn't the problem. The Japanese Kwangtung army was totally insubordinate. Often it acted in direct contravention to received orders from Japanese imperial general staff. Sometimes it even acted in direct violation of an order from the emperor. Often times it would be forewarned what the order from the imperial general staff was going to be, and timed its insorbinate actions to occur just before the order is technically received.

Even inside Kwangtung army insubordination of the mid-level staff against commanding officer's order with habitual. From 1931-1939 it was the hyper-nationalistic fanatical mid level staff officers, the majors, lieutenant colonels and the colonels at Kwangtung army staff that was calling the shots for Kwangtung army policy in Manchuria and china, which in turn in a tail wag dog fashion became the policy imposed upon the imperial general staff and Japanese foreign ministry.

This practice even had a name - gekokujo - the rule of the above from the below, or rule by loyal insubordination.

Kwangtung army's operational staff was politically well connected and powerful, and escaped retribution for its insubordination until the Nomonhan diseaster. After nomonhan the group of staff officers who had ran the show in northern china was broken up and distributed to other parts of the army. Some were forced to commit suicide.

 

[ABC78]

Japan's military was kind of obsessed with playing to the concept of the "Decisive Engagement" ever since Battle of Tsushima. Every time they thought this was the decisive engagement the results were always against them or lead to mission creek. They also really bought in to the "Shock and Aww" they thought taking Nanjing and putting it to the sword China would just surrender, Pearl Harbor they thought the US would just stay out of Asia.

 

[chuck731]

Japan's military was kind of obsessed with playing to the concept of the "Decisive Engagement" ever since Battle of Tsushima. Every time they thought this was the decisive engagement the results were always against them or lead to mission creek. They also really bought in to the "Shock and Aww" they thought taking Nanjing and putting it to the sword China would just surrender, Pearl Harbor they thought the US would just stay out of Asia.

That's because japan lacked both resource and industrial capacity to wage a lengthy war and throw the dice many times. She only get a very few throws of the dice and had to make those count as much as possible.

 

[Rutim]

This practice even had a name - gekokujo - the rule of the above from the below, or rule by loyal insubordination.

On a side note, in Japanese Imperial Army it has been started by Kanji Ishawara with his plans about Manchuria who had so much power on the troops that he was put aside when he opposed the idea of war against China pressured by Togo as they feared his natural charisma. Those are facts which aren't taken into discussion in West often but probably had a big impact on the world we're living in now.

 

[chuck731]

On a side note, in Japanese Imperial Army it has been started by Kanji Ishawara with his plans about Manchuria who had so much power on the troops that he was put aside when he opposed the idea of war against China pressured by Togo as they feared his natural charisma. Those are facts which aren't taken into discussion in West often but probably had a big impact on the world we're living in now.

It is startling how much influence nationalism gave the Japanese army, how highly racial and national pride made the Japanese army regard itself, and yet how blind it was to the latest developments in military thinking around the world, and how quite thoroughly second rate the Japanese army really proved itself to be when it ran into tough opponents.

 

[shen]

It is startling how much influence nationalism gave the Japanese army, how highly racial and national pride made the Japanese army regard itself, and yet how blind it was to the latest developments in military thinking around the world, and how quite thoroughly second rate the Japanese army really proved itself to be when it ran into tough opponents.

I think gekokujo was only partly due to the nationalist and racial theories fashionable around the world at the time. It reminds me of the Confucian concept of earnestness, in which loyal subordinates are expect to give honest and frank counsels to their superior even if the superior doesn't want to here it even at the cost of death and disgrace. In a military atmosphere, combined with the facist idea of the man of action, this traditional Confucian ideal seems to have take to an extreme.
In fighter ace Saburo Sakai's autobiography, he observed that American soldiers worked better as a team, while the Japanese are too individualist.

 

[shen]

Japan's military was kind of obsessed with playing to the concept of the "Decisive Engagement" ever since Battle of Tsushima. Every time they thought this was the decisive engagement the results were always against them or lead to mission creek. They also really bought in to the "Shock and Aww" they thought taking Nanjing and putting it to the sword China would just surrender, Pearl Harbor they thought the US would just stay out of Asia.

Decisive Battle was American naval theorist Alfred Mahan's idea. It was adopted by nearly every naval powers.